Tag: dysphagia
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Eating in Social Situations When Swallowing Is Hard
Eating is rarely just about food. It’s about timing, conversation, shared plates, laughter, and unspoken rules about pace and participation. When swallowing becomes difficult, those social rules suddenly work against you. Most people who struggle with swallowing already know what their body needs. Smaller bites. More moisture. More time. What’s harder to navigate is everything…
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How Texture Changes When Food Cools (And Why It Matters More Than You Think)
Most people think food texture is fixed. You cook something, it’s soft or it’s crunchy, and that’s that. But texture isn’t static. It’s alive. It changes with temperature, time, moisture loss, and even how a food was cooked in the first place. If you’ve ever reheated leftovers and thought this isn’t the same food, you’ve…
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Why Some ‘Soft Foods’ Still Cause Choking (and What Actually Works)
If you have ever witnessed a bite of food that was supposed to be “safe” feel less than, you may already know the quiet truth that’s not outwardly intuitive. Soft does not always mean easy to swallow. For many people, the first moment does not need some extravagant bite, it can be with one of…
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When Eating Feels Hard: Foods That Take Less Effort
There are times when eating just feels harder than it used to. Chewing takes more work. Meals feel tiring. Foods that once felt easy now feel dry, stubborn, or uncomfortable. For many people, this shift happens gradually, and if that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. And you don’t need a diagnosis or a special “diet”…
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Dysphagia-Friendly Fast Food
This guide focuses on adapting common fast food items for modified textures such as puréed, minced and moist, soft & bite-sized, and easy to chew, with swallowing safety in mind. Reviewed by a licensed speech-language pathologist. Fast food is a part of real life. It’s where people meet up between errands or grabbing something on…
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Understanding Your Swallow Study: How to Read Dysphagia Reports
If you’ve recently had a swallow study or are waiting for one, you may have a report full of unfamiliar words: residue, penetration, peristalsis, dysmotility. It can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re already anxious about eating. By the end of this page, you’ll know how to read the results, what they mean for your daily…
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How to Make a Fortified Sipping Broth at Home
Walk into any grocery store today and you’ll see entire shelves dedicated to liquids in cartons: chicken broth, beef stock, bone broth, sipping broth. Some promise “collagen for your skin,” others “restaurant-quality flavor.” And yet, for all the branding, most people couldn’t tell you where broth ends and stock begins. That’s not just trivia. For…
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How Do I Swallow?
Dysphagia is a very large umbrella for a large collection of symptoms at a large range of severities. This is not medical advice for your self-treatment; evaluation by a licensed speech-language pathologist is critical to determine if there are any physiological changes responsible for sudden changes in eating/drinking/swallowing. You must consult with your physician for…
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Mindful Eating
Engaging the Senses with a Single Bite Mindful eating is a powerful tool, especially when navigating dysphagia. It helps build awareness of the swallowing process, reduces anxiety around meals, and strengthens the mind-muscle connection. This guided activity will help you focus on the sensory experience of eating, using a single small bite of a safe…
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5 Tools For a Modified Texture Kitchen
I love the flexibility of cooking. If you gave 10 home chefs the same request, I bet you’d come away with at least three completely different ways to tackle it. Technique is often the most critiqued aspect of the way that a person cooks, but within the “how” of the dish, there’s also a question…